This is part of an interview with David Frear CFO of Sirius at a Deutsche Bank Conf.

The content costs have declined significantly at Sirius XM since the merger. Frear said:

So just before we merge that the two companies were spending about $400 million a year on programming, and it's now down to just a little under $300 million. It's an unusual pattern for programming cost in media in the United States. But it speaks volumes as about the inefficiencies of the two companies being separately, efficiencies have been together.I think that are - we still expect programming cost to come down slightly from where they are now, but we really have now sort of gotten through, I think all of the - all of the big deals. and so I wouldn't expect any material declines in programming cost from here in the absence of a major piece of content leaving the platform.
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Note that Frear states that most of the cost savings have been realized and that he only expects them to decline slightly, with the exception being a major piece of content leaving the platform. A major piece of the content expense is Howard Stern whose contract comes up for renewal at the end of 2015. Frear stated:

Well, Howard is a unique talent in radio. I mean there has never been anybody like him and never will be, right? And he puts on a fantastic show. He works hard. He's a great partner - just we can be happier with relationship that we've had with Howard. It's like any great performer, there is going to come a day when he decides to step off the competitive stage, and I hope that day is much later rather than sooner. I don't know what he we will decide to do when his contract is up. I know that we'd like to keep him on our air and performing for as long as he'd like to do that.

Does Sirius really think it needs to retain Howard past 2015, it's not like Howard can go anywhere else and command his salary.
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There is absolutely no reason for Sirius to praise Stern. If your trying to lowball him you say that Sirius diverse programming is drawing the listeners and thank Stern for help building Sirius radio. I have a theory that Howard will continue in radio as an obligation to Robin. I think Robin needs the job more than Howard because she has nothing else in her life.

So it sounds like Howard commands about 28% of all their content costs for an average of about 8 hours of content a week, plus old re-runs. If they had just 100 channels (probably more?) they would need 16800 hours of content a week.

CEO's tenure these days is not always long. Most of their compensation is in the form of stock options and other incentives. A guy could easily obtain a short term surge in profits by dropping an $80M expense and replacing that with $3M of "talent" on those channels. It would take some time for subscriber long term plans to expire and not be renewed. Add to that the "auto renew" nature of Sirius that discourages people from bothering to cancel, and the stock could be bumped up quite a bit for a few quarters. By that time he's cashed in $200M or so of options based on the higher stock price, has steadily sold most of his existing shares at the elevated price at a nice profit, and is ready to "retire" or "pursue other options" with his seed money.

Sounds like typical company spin when discussing content, praising Howard's work ethic and the "fantastic show" he puts on (3 days a week). Also, what kind of "great partner" files a ridiculous $300 million lawsuit against the company?

There is absolutely no reason for Sirius to praise Stern. If your trying to lowball him you say that Sirius diverse programming is drawing the listeners and thank Stern for help building Sirius radio. I have a theory that Howard will continue in radio as an obligation to Robin. I think Robin needs the job more than Howard because she has nothing else in her life.

Consider the way Howard treated CBS in the final two years of his contract there. Constant plugging of "eh-eh-eh", withholding content until the move etc.... Sirius will say nothing bad about Howard, they get little enough for their money as it is, they don't wan t to make it worse.